The Shadow Saint

by Gareth Hanrahan

  The spy stays standing, watching the fate he’s made. Fire, damn you, he thinks, urging the gunners on the Grand Retort to overcome the churning waves, the smoke, the chaos, and loose their weapon. Step over the dying, you can do nothing for them. They will be remembered as martyrs. Just launch the accursed thing!

  Silver cords of destiny weave so thickly around the manifest god that they, too, become visible, a billion destinies anchored to this single point in time. Fate Spider shrieks in frustration as it tries one strand of the web, then another and another, but cannot tear itself free from the alchemists’ machine. Cannot escape, not as long as its tethered to Emlin. Congruency goes both ways–the machine turns Emlin’s sainthood into a snare that drags the god out of heaven, forces it to manifest. If the god bomb were ready, the trap would close.

  One sailor struggles across the heaving deck of the Retort, gets a gloved hand to the firing mechanism. Fumbles with the trigger, his clumsy fingers struggling to repair the damage caused by the blast. So very close.

  The snare is a potent one, well made, but Fate Spider is older than the world. There is no trap it cannot outwit, in the end. Spinnerets of destiny throw out a new web, new strands of possibility. One strand finds purchase in the physical world. A new destiny. A way out.

  There’s an instant’s hesitation, though, before the miracle. Some fragment of Emlin, maybe, caught up in the terrible embrace of the god.

  It gives the spy a moment to duck for cover as fate lashes out like a whip.

  The fires reach the Grand Retort’s phlogiston reserve, and the ship erupts in a second explosion. This one rips it in half. The unlucky sailor is killed instantly, his body pulverised by the blast.

  The bow sinks, taking the god bomb with it–the spy can feel the horrible shape of the weapon even as it plunges down through forty feet of water. Explosions ripple along the stern, showering the area in shards of burning metal. One large chunk–big enough to impale a man–lands inches away from where the spy was standing a moment ago.

  Other pieces of shrapnel rain down across the courtyard, starting fires. Debris cracks the surface of the mirror tower, sending bright fragments of glass tumbling to earth. The roof of the processing shed is alight. Flames lick the tanks of soporific gas.

  There’s a third explosion, this time on the island, a lurid burst of green flame as the gas tanks ignite. Flames rush down the rubber tubes that connect the tanks to all those cells. All the saint-prisons in the arc of cells are connected to those gas tanks. So are half the rooms in the fort complex itself. The mirror tower blazes with fiery light, as it reflects a dozen or more fires starting simultaneously.

  With a whine, the aetheric lights go out. A shower of sparks hisses in the sea south of the island, as the divine summoning machinery dies. The manifestation of Fate Spider vanishes, the spectral spider-god dissolving back into the unseen realms.

  Silkpurse grabs the spy, drags him back down the steps. She’s yelping, an animalistic noise of terror and confusion. They pass the blazing inferno that was the interrogation room. Gobbets of molten rubber drip from the ceiling as the gas-jet catches fire.

  “Got to get out. Got to get out,” moans Silkpurse. She stumbles to one of the windows, tries to squeeze through, but it’s too narrow. She claws at the stone in terror.

  “Come on!” He’s leading her now, pulling her towards the stairs. The stairwell’s full of smoke, but no flames yet. They rush downstairs to ground level. Outside, it’s chaos. The whole fort is ablaze–maybe the whole island. Greenish-blue smoke chokes the dusk.

  The sound of roaring is met by gunfire. The saints are loose. The gas has stopped, and some of them have had their prayers answered.

  “We have to get off the island!” he says.

  “I must get Miss Duttin. And Cari.” Silkpurse clenches her clawed fists, then dashes off into the madness and fire of the courtyard.

  The spy walks forward. The gate of the prison is open and unguarded.

  There, ahead of him, is the jetty. He can see the lights of boats approaching it, beams cutting through the smoke that rolls over the water, coming to rescue any survivors of the conflagration. All he has to do is wait by the shore. Everyone else in the prison might burn, but the spy will survive.

  For a little while, anyway. The manifestation of Fate Spider has vanished, but Ishmere is coming. Kraken swims through the seas. Cloud Mother births the horizon. Blessed Bol whispers in the clink of every coin in Guerdon’s markets. Striding ahead of them all, Lion Queen. And the instrument of his revenge lies under forty feet of water on the far side of the island.

  There’s a strange, wordless keening noise, somewhere between a whimper and a scream. He can’t tell where it’s coming from, then realises he’s making it.

  The spy might survive, but his plan has failed.

  Eladora watches in horror as the Grand Retort explodes. The prow sinks beneath the waves, carrying the linchpin of Guerdon’s defences with it. Sparks and shrapnel from the blazing stern fall across the fort, lighting fires. The whole tower lurches when the gas tanks go up.

  For a moment, she glimpses two figures on the roof of the old fort. Silkpurse and Alic.

  “Please, I must go,” she begins, but the tower commander grabs her, points to the space under a table.

  “Stay there,” he orders, “keep that breathing mask on.”

  The aethergraph clatters, a dozen messages coming through at once. The commander barks orders. Some guards are sent down to keep order in the cells. Others are sent to the walls, to signal the boats offshore to come in and take the survivors. To destroy parts of the machine, before it can be misused by escaped saints. From downstairs, Eladora hears shouts, screams, gunfire. She crouches under the table as ordered, trying to stay out of the way of the military as they mount a desperate defence of the prison. Outside, the courtyard has become the Godswar in microcosm, as mad saints from a dozen pantheons recall old grudges at the same time as they recall divine powers.

  Smoke clouds fill the air outside the tower. It’s like they’re in a glass boat sailing on a sea of fire, disconnected from the world outside. The only tether to sanity is that chattering aethergraph. The operator reads off messages in a clipped tone, staying true to his training despite the carnage, reporting the sinking of the Grand Retort, responding to panicked inquiries from Queen’s Point, from parliament, from a dozen other stations.

  The aetherglyph chatters again.

  “Sir, Queen’s Point has our range. They’ll fire in twenty minutes. Full howler battery.”

  “Sound the evacuation order,” snaps the commander.

  Queen’s Point bristles with cannons, and her long guns can reach all the way out into the harbour. They’re going to rain down howler-shells and philogiston bursts, wipe the island clean.

  “We’ll form up on the ground floor,” says the commander, fastening his mask and checking his handgun. “Make straight for the gates. Edder, Valomar, provide covering fire from the tower.” He turns to Eladora. “Miss Duttin, you’re with us. Just keep your head down.”

  “I came here on Minister Kelkin’s authority to retrieve three detainees. I can’t leave without them.”

  “Unless they’re already at the boat, Miss Duttin, there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Effro Kelkin himself—”

  He points to the aethergraph. “Send him a message if you want. Bring him here in person if you want. It won’t matter. There’s no time.”

  The spy walks down onto the stony beach, heedless of the blazing fortress behind him, ignoring the sounds of carnage. He wades into the cold waters and washes the soot from his face.

  Washes away any trace of the gas.

  Washes away X84, the failed agent of Ishmere.

  Washes away Sanhada Baradhin, lets the man’s face and name float off into the bay.

  Washes away a hundred other names he’s worn.

  The plan has failed. Does he have the strength to start again, somewhere else? He was only a fraction
al being when he first came to Guerdon, and he’s lost even more of himself since then.

  Better, maybe, to let it go.

  He begins to dissolve, to wash away the last name left to the spy, when Alic hears Emlin weeping in the distance.

  The spotlight of one of the boats catches Emlin, revealing him in the darkness. He’s chained to an iron chair on the tooth of rock, surrounded by occult machinery. Mechanical summoning circles, spinning like prayer wheels. Aetheric engines. Tanks of jellyfish, grown with human souls, bred to blindly adore and worship whatever deity they’re shown. And behind him, the statue of the Fate Spider from the Street of Shrines.

  The boat turns, the crew hurrying to bring the deck gun to bear.

  Alic turns back, wades onto the shore. Then runs, leaping from rock to rock, following the spit of land out towards that rocky outcrop. He’s racing the gunboat, racing the fragmentation shell from the deck gun. Shouts from the boat when the crew spot him, ordering him to turn back.

  Then, when he doesn’t stop, small arms fire cracks on the rocks around him. Alic doesn’t care–he’s a wisp, a fragment, a lie of a man. He barely exists.

  But Emlin’s real. Whatever else, the boy’s real. Flesh and blood, so very mortal, so very fragile. An innocent child walked into the Paper Tombs in Ishmere, was offered up to the gods. He’s belonged to Fate Spider ever since.

  Alic runs towards his child. His heart pounds in his chest, his lungs fill with acrid smoke. He feels alive for the first time.

  Emlin’s head lolls to the side. He’s drooling, his eyes unfocused. Blood smeared across his face, running from his ears and nose. The boy channelled the full power of a god–it’ll be a miracle if he’s still sane. Alic scrambles over the rocks and broken machines to his side. The metal of the summoning circle burns hot to the touch. Cracked aetheric engines leak wild magic into the world.

  “Emlin?”

  The boy sees Alic, and it’s like he’s waking from a nightmare. Gods above and below, gods of every nation, he’s still alive! His eyes light up, he coughs, spits out blood, calls out to Alic.

  “I want to go home.”

  Emlin is bound to the iron chair by heavy manacles, scored with runes of binding. Alic tears at the clasps, trying to find how to undo the mechanism, but it’s too tightly sealed. He tugs at the manacles, hammers at them with a rock. Tears at them until his fingers bleed.

  “What’s happening?” asks Emlin, weakly. “I saw… is it the fleet? Are they here?”

  The gunboat blares its horn, a last warning. The deck gun’s armed and loaded. They’re not going to relent.

  There’s no time to escape.

  No time to say farewell.

  Many and strange are the blessings of the Fate Spider.

  Only time for a father’s benediction, before the thundercrack of the guns, and the outcrop’s annihilated by a hail of shells.

  CHAPTER 42

  Terevant runs through the gardens of the Patros, as best he can. Stumbling in the darkness, crashing through hedges and slipping on slick grass. Adrenaline overcoming the pain in his chest. He can feel the heat of his periapts, triggered by his injuries, as they stand ready to resurrect him if he falls, and he honestly isn’t sure he’s alive or dead by the time he makes it to the entrance to the tunnel. Without hesitation, he dives into the darkness.

  Shouts echo down the tunnel behind him. Sinter’s men are giving chase. Terevant runs, blind in the utter darkness of this underworld. He guesses that the passageway has to link up with the cellars of the palace somehow, so he hurries in that direction. Stumbling over the uneven floor, feeling his way along the moisture-slick walls. The tunnel floor gives way to rough-cut stairs, and he makes it down without breaking his neck.

  The shouts still echo, but from somewhere far away. He keeps walking, stumbling, until there’s nothing but the dripping silence of the underworld. It’s so dark that only the dead could see down here. His shirt’s wet with blood again–one of his wounds has opened. Maybe more than one.

  The tunnel ends in what seems to be a pile of fallen rocks. He probes with his hands for a way through, and finds a narrow passageway off to the side. Squeezing through, he discovers it leads down. He stops, wondering if it’s better to try retracing his steps in the utter darkness and search for the turning that must lead back to the cellars, or keep going. He tries to bring the maps from Gethis Row to mind, but the tunnels below the city are more intricate and intertwined than the veins and arteries beneath the flesh of a flayed corpse.

  Once, he has the impression that there’s someone else here with him. The sound of someone else, breathing heavily. Smells of ash and salt. But when he reaches out, there’s no one there. Just a trick of the darkness.

  He finds he’s on the floor. Unable to tell if the wetness on the stone is moisture trickling down from above, or his own sticky blood. Unable to tell if he’s blacked out for a instant, or an hour, or many hours. Or if he’s died casteless, lost forever in the darkness. Imagining himself rising as a Vigilant, only to wander the endless labyrinths beneath the city forever, never finding his way back. Maybe he’ll meet Edoric Vanth some day, centuries hence, another dead man blundering through this maze. Lost in the lies.

  He’s back in the woods outside the Erevesic mansion, and it’s very cold. There are wolves in these woods, Olthic cautions him, stay close.

  You’re dead, he tells Olthic, and father’s dead. And I’m the Erevesic. You tried to prepare me for that, but I didn’t listen.

  I lost sight of it, too, says Olthic, but it’s simple. Take up your sword.

  Terevant tries to tell his brother that he lost the Erevesic sword, that the family blade is gone, but he falls into darkness again. His fingers are too numb to hold a blade, even if he had one.

  From down the tunnel, the sound of snuffling.

  An unearthly screech, and something lands against the outside of the tower with a heavy thump. For an instant, Eladora glimpses a face through the glass, the impression of an arachnid form, but it’s gone before she can blink. The soldiers swivel in place, levelling their weapons at the windows, but whatever’s out there scuttles away before they can fire. There’s nothing visible now through the soot-stained glass.

  One guard dares to open the door. “It’s clear, sir.”

  “Form up!” orders the commander. His men rush downstairs. He looks to Eladora. “I’ll leave you behind if I have to, miss.”

  She has to find Carillon, and Alic. And she thinks she recognised that face at the window, despite the changes. “I’ll see you at the boat.”

  “Fifteen minutes. You shall have no more.” The commander’s expression is unreadable behind his mask as he turns and marches down the stairs. They charge out, guns barking, their bullets clearing a path through warped divinity.

  One minute ticks by. Two. Eladora hides under the desk again, watches the room. Everything in the tower is very still. Everything outside the tower is hell.

  The face appears at the window again. Spider-legs probe the glass for weaknesses, then a human fist smashes against a cracked pane. Eladora suppresses a squeak of horror at the sight of the monstrous amalgam. The creature’s god-touched, his formerly human frame warped and blended with the essence of the divine Spider. Horribly long, spindly legs carry the saint across the room, his human torso hunched against the ceiling. He moves towards the commander’s desk with quiet intent.

  Then those eight eyes spot Eladora’s hiding place. The spider-saint turns on her, yellowish venom dripping from human teeth.

  It worked for Sinter, thinks Eladora, but he’s much further gone than I was. “Emlin!” she calls, naming the mortal in front of her, and not the god entwined with him. “Emlin,” she cries again. She hopes it’s his real name.

  Emlin pauses. His stance shifts, his expression softens. Tears well up; he swallows his venom. “Fate Spider chose me. Showed me what is coming. He gave me strength.”

  “Emlin! Listen,” Eladora begs. “They tried to make me a sai
nt, too. I’m still me. You don’t have to obey.”

  “Can’t stay. This place will burn. I’ve seen it.” Emlin scuttles back, then picks up the heavy aethergraph machine from the desk, cables trailing from it like entrails. Eladora cowers, terrified that Emlin is about to hurl the machine at her, but then the saint lowers his head and bites into the machine, sinking his teeth into the metal as if he’s eating a succulent fruit. Venom rushes from his fangs, discolouring the metal, mixing with the bubbling alchemical fluids at the heart of the device.

  He lifts his head for a moment. “Run! It’s coming.” And then he bites the aethergraph again.

  Eladora watches in horror and confusion as Emlin dissolves, or shrinks, somehow flowing into the machine.

  The aetherglyph crashes to the ground when Emlin vanishes. The cables vibrate as something moves through them.

  Those cables connect to the mainland, to a web of aethergraph stations. To machines throughout Guerdon, all in places of great importance. Parliament, Queen’s Point, the alchemists’ guildhall, city watch stations… all the city’s organs, linked by nerves of spun orichalcum.

  Eladora checks the aethergraph, wondering if she can send a warning to the mainland, but the machine’s dead.

  Five minutes gone.

  Six, and she’s at the door of the tower, the keys to the prison block clutched in her hand.

  Seven, and she’s in the courtyard. One of the skeletal metal towers has crashed down across the yard, blocking the mirror-tower off from the worst of the chaos. Through the smoke and flames, she can see the last of the guards holding the gate of the fort. The earth is soaked with the blood of saints.

  Eight, and she’s stumbling across the courtyard. The breathing mask is all that keeps her from succumbing to the foul smoke. The heat blisters her skin. There’s the door to the cells.